Morgan Spurlock -- whose mix of affable good humor, wise guy populism, shameless showmanship and participatory journalism
made Super Size Me a breakout hit at Sundance in 2004 -- is back in Park City with his follow-up feature documentary, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?
And those elements are all still very much in effect in Spurlock''''s
sophomore feature film, even if they may occasionally feel in need of
slight fine-tuning. Inspired by the impending birth of his first child,
Spurlock hits upon one thing he can do to make the world a safer place
for his yet-to-be-born offspring; find and capture Osama bin Laden, the
mastermind behind September 11th and the leader of Al Qaeda. As
Spurlock notes in his introduction, "If I''''ve learned anything from big
budget action films, it''''s that complicated world problems are best
solved by one lonely guy. ...." And while Spurlock may not actually
answer the
question of where, he actually tackles, with humor, probing wit and a certain grace, the much more important question of why. And while Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?
offers more than a spoonful of sugar to help the
medicine go down, at
least there is a little medicine. After security training and an
extensive battery of shots, Spurlock begins touring the globe to find
out who Osama is and where he came from. A quote from Dick Cheney gives
a party-line take on the roots of terrorist hatred for America: "They
hate us, they hate our country, they hate the liberties for which we
stand." But, as comedian David Cross notes in one of his charged
stand-up bits, if the terrorists really hated freedom, then the Netherlands would be dust long before America got attacked.Write your abstract here.